John Evelyn

John Evelyn was a prolific author who wrote on a wide range of subjects including politics, horticulture and theology. One of his most famous works, however, is his Diary, a work contemporaneous with that of Samuel Pepys, who was Evelyn’s friend for some 40 years. The work is a fabulous sourcebook for seventeenth-century England, and further enlightens us regarding a crucial period in English history, covering as it does the deaths of Charles I and Cromwell, the Restoration, the plague and the Great Fire of London, as well as giving detailed accounts of the ambitious experiments and discoveries being made by members of the Royal Society.

This invaluable little book provides a summary of the contents of Evelyn’s Diary, aimed at those with an interest in the period but unconvinced about tackling the whole work head-on. The author hopes that his concise distillation of this fascinating portrait of the times will persuade his readers otherwise.